"It was in the early morning hours of Dec. 22, 1992," he recalled, when Gallo confronted an intruder in the kitchen of their Howe Avenue home and was shot by the intruder.

The murder is sill a "very active" file in the department's cold case file, he said.

"We now have a person in Alabama that has appeared on the scene, someone who was young at the time of the crime," he said. "That's why he wasn't on our radar at first. But now it makes more sense, because he moved out-of-state just after the crime was committed. And since he was young, he freaked out when Gallo came down the stairs."

According to press reports, the Gallo family was asleep upstairs when Francis heard a noise and went downstairs to investigate. His wife found him lying on the floor, shot in the neck. He would die a short time later, leaving behind not only his wife, but two young children -- Lindsay, 11, and Francis Jr., 14. He was just 41.

"We just don't have that last piece that we need for probable cause," Madden said. "Somebody else knows the story, and we're looking for the person who can tell us the truth."

The Gallo case will be one piece of baggage that Madden will take with him when he retires at the end of the month and becomes the chief of police in the town of Paris, Maine.

Madden, 49, was born in 1964 and lived in Stratford as a small child. His dad, Robert, was active in politics and was the town's councilman-at-large for a time in the early 1960s, the highest elected office back then. The family moved to Shelton in 1970 when he was 6.

Though he had a stint as a disc-jockey, a sports announcer and even a purchasing agent, Madden always had a hand in police work, serving as a part-time cop in Shelton on the weekends, first as an unpaid auxiliary officer and later as a so-called supernumerary.

"My second day on the job, I get a call from the lieutenant: "Can you run three miles with a dog? Do you want to be a K-9 officer?"

"I said, `Sure, I'll take a dog,' " he said. "Shadow was my first dog -- he died after six years, and then I got Danny, who was from Czechoslovakia. The biggest thing was teaching him English. He only knew Czech commands at first."

He said that both Shadow and Danny were "great tracking dogs" and were involved with finding a number of missing persons and criminal suspects.

After his stint as a K-9 officer, he was appointed as a detective sergeant, meaning that he was in charge of the Detective Bureau, and was later promoted as a detective lieutenant and, ultimately in 2005, as a captain.

"Marshall Tucker -- of course they have a big management company out in California," he said. "But I have been friends with their lead singer, Doug Gray, in college, and this side job started years ago when they had a few people who were stalking them."

So, at first he assisted with providing security, and later on he became more involved with their operations, such as improving their website. He also manages the Highland Rovers and other acts, too.

But police work was and will always be his focus.

"I found over the years that when you treat people with respect, you get respect back, even with criminals," he said. "A lot of these suspects, you know, you feel for them. That happens a lot. Their backs are against the wall. But this is my job."